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Israel targets and murders Hamas leader and his family in Gaza
Israel has targeted and murdered Ezz Al-Din Al-Haddad, the commander of Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, along with his wife and daughter, in a series of attacks that killed at least five other people and wounded more than 50 others, with a typical disregard for any sense of proportionality regarding “collateral damage.”
One of the commanders of the attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Al-Haddad, born in 1970, had become the commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades — and Hamas’ leader in Gaza — after the murder of Yahya Sinwar in October 2024, and his brother Mohammed, who succeeded him, in May 2025.
Known as “the Ghost of Gaza”, “because of his secrecy and ability to avoid repeated Israeli attempts to locate him” as the Palestine Chronicle explained, Al-Haddad had been repeatedly targeted for assassination by Israel over the last 31 months, and a reward of $750,000 had been offered for information leading to his whereabouts.
Like all Palestinians in Gaza, Al-Haddad had lost family members to Israel’s mostly relentless attacks over the last 31 months. His eldest son and grandson were killed in an airstrike in January 2025, and his second son was killed in another airstrike in April.
Will it change anything? I doubt it. Hamas will find a new leader in Gaza, while Israel won’t stop killing, because that’s all it lives for. It has murdered so many senior figures in Gaza, but it fails to understand that Hamas is an idea, of resistance, and that new recruits will always been found — and especially after the unparalleled atrocities of the last 31 months.
The BBC reported that Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz said that Al-Haddad had "refused to implement the agreement led by US President Trump to disarm Hamas and demilitarise the Gaza Strip”, but that was a typical distortion of the truth.
When the ceasefire deal began last October, Hamas refused to commit to disarmament negotiations until Israel showed its commitment to the first phase of the deal, involving an end to military attacks, and the full resumption of humanitarian aid deliveries.
Although the relentless bombing stopped, Israel has repeatedly broken the ceasefire deal, killing at least 800 Palestinians in repeated attacks, and restricting the entry of agreed quantities of food, medicine, medical supplies and shelter materials into Gaza.
On disarmament, Hamas has always expressed its willingness to hand over arms to a new Palestinian government in Gaza, rightly fearing that, if they were to disarm completely, they would be defenceless against Israel, a genocidal aggressor whose appetite for Palestinian blood is seemingly unquenchable.
However, Israel and the US have grown increasingly intolerant, insisting that disarmament must precede any improvement in conditions for the remaining population of Gaza, who are now plagued with attacks by vermin, including rats, as a result of the unaddressed hygiene crisis in Gaza, and are also once more being subjected to starvation and profoundly inadequate supplies of clean water.
Shamefully, because of Israeli and US betrayals, no end to their suffering is in sight.
